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› Find signed collectible books: 'Against Depression'
Written as an answer to the question, "What if van Gogh had been on anti-depressants," Against Depression manages to be more of an exploration than a polemic, regardless of its title. While author Peter Kramer (Listening to Prozac) expresses a definite opinion--that disease of any sort should be treated as effectively as possible--he manages to express sympathy along with frustration about the recurring idea that soulful creativity often goes hand-in-hand with depression. Without ever being dismissive or particularly angry, his writing makes his point abundantly clear after the first chapter: The pervasive idea of depression serving a creative purpose is preposterous, as well as highly damaging.
While he draws from a number of recent studies on depression, the book is not meant to assist in the diagnosis or treatment of individuals, except in a very general sense. Instead, Kramer adds the findings of those studies into his thoughts on how patients modify medication doses for depression as they wouldn't for purely physical diseases, and looks into future possibilities of genetically modified stress hormone transmitters that could work to prevent a slide into chronic depression. In the arts, he examines the work of philosophers, painters and writers in relation to the reputation their personal lives have earned (critics and consumers alike believe that pain equals genius and lack of pain equals lack of depth). Adding Dineson, Bellow, Updike and Kierkegaard to the list headed by van Gogh, Kramer shows a variety of ways we live with the assumption that creative genius does not function without severe emotional strain.
While he does include a few stories from a patient to illustrate specific treatments, most of the book is slow and thoughtful, without ever being dry or pedantic. Useful to families or individuals who have encountered depression, this book offers excellent support for anyone--creative genius or otherwise--who struggle to define their talents as existing separately from their illness. Jill Lightner [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'American Roulette: How I Turned The Odds Upside Down, My Wild Twenty-Five-Year Ride Ripping Off The World's Casinos'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Bell Jar'
Plath was an excellent poet but is known to many for this largely autobiographical novel. The Bell Jar tells the story of a gifted young woman's mental breakdown beginning during a summer internship as a junior editor at a magazine in New York City in the early 1950s. The real Plath committed suicide in 1963 and left behind this scathingly sad, honest and perfectly-written book, which remains one of the best-told tales of a woman's descent into insanity. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Bell Jar'
Plath was an excellent poet but is known to many for this largely autobiographical novel. The Bell Jar tells the story of a gifted young woman's mental breakdown beginning during a summer internship as a junior editor at a magazine in New York City in the early 1950s. The real Plath committed suicide in 1963 and left behind this scathingly sad, honest and perfectly-written book, which remains one of the best-told tales of a woman's descent into insanity. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Catcher in the Rye'
Anyone who has read J.D. Salinger's New Yorker stories ? particularly A Perfect Day for Bananafish, Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut, The Laughing Man, and For Esme ? With Love and Squalor, will not be surprised by the fact that his first novel is fully of children. The hero-narrator of THE CATCHER IN THE RYE is an ancient child of sixteen, a native New Yorker named Holden Caulfield. Through circumstances that tend to preclude adult, secondhand description, he leaves his prep school in Pennsylvania and goes underground in New York City for three days. The boy himself is at once too simple and too complex for us to make any final comment about him or his story. Perhaps the safest thing we can say about Holden is that he was born in the world not just strongly attracted to beauty but, almost, hopelessly impaled on it. There are many voices in this novel: children's voices, adult voices, underground voices-but Holden's voice is the most eloquent of all. Transcending his own vernacular, yet remaining marvelously faithful to it, he issues a perfectly articulated cry of mixed pain and pleasure. However, like most lovers and clowns and poets of the higher orders, he keeps most of the pain to, and for, himself. The pleasure he gives away, or sets aside, with all his heart. It is there for the reader who can handle it to keep. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Catcher in the Rye: New Essays'
J. D. Salinger's novel, The Catcher in the Rye celebrated its fiftieth anniversary of publication in 2001. The Catcher in the Rye: New Essays presents a variety of new approaches to this extremely popular and intensely influential novel, ranging [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Catcher in the Rye'
Since his debut in 1951 as The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield has been synonymous with "cynical adolescent." Holden narrates the story of a couple of days in his sixteen-year-old life, just after he's been expelled from prep school, in a slang that sounds edgy even today and keeps this novel on banned book lists. It begins,
"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them."
His constant wry observations about what he encounters, from teachers to phonies (the two of course are not mutually exclusive) capture the essence of the eternal teenage experience of alienation. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness'
In 1985 William Styron fell victim to a crippling and almost suicidal depression, the same illness that took the lives of Randall Jarrell, Primo Levi and Virginia Woolf. That Styron survived his descent into madness is something of a miracle. That he manages to convey its tortuous progression and his eventual recovery with such candor and precision makes Darkness Visible a rare feat of literature, a book that will arouse a shock of recognition even in those readers who have been spared the suffering it describes. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'El Guardian Entre El Centeno/ The Catcher in the Rye'
Por expreso deseo del autor, no esta ermitido que la editorial aporte en su material promocional ningu tipo de texto adicional, informacio biograica, cita o resen relacionados con esta obra. El lector interesado podra no obstante, encontrar abundante informacio al respecto en internet. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy'
The good news is that anxiety, guilt, pessimism, procrastination, low self-esteem, and other "black holes" of depression can be cured without drugs. In Feeling Good, eminent psychiatrist, David D. Burns, M.D., outlines the remarkable, scientifically proven techniques that will immediately lift your spirits and help you develop a positive outlook on life. Now, in this updated edition, Dr. Burns adds an All-New Consumer2s Guide To Anti-depressant Drugs as well as a new introduction to help answer your questions about the many options available for treating depression.
- Recognise what causes your mood swings
- Nip negative feelings in the bud
- Deal with guilt
- Handle hostility and criticism
- Overcome addiction to love and approval
- Build self-esteem
- Feel good everyday
[via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Girl, Interrupted'
When reality got "too dense" for 18-year-old Susanna Kaysen, she was hospitalized. It was 1967, and reality was too dense for many people. But few who are labeled mad and locked up for refusing to stick to an agreed-upon reality possess Kaysen's lucidity in sorting out a maelstrom of contrary perceptions. Her observations about hospital life are deftly rendered; often darkly funny. Her clarity about the complex province of brain and mind, of neuro-chemical activity and something more, make this book of brief essays an exquisite challenge to conventional thinking about what is normal and what is deviant. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Grapes of Wrath'
When The Grapes of Wrath was published in 1939, America, still recovering from the Great Depression, came face to face with itself in a startling, lyrical way. John Steinbeck gathered the country's recent shames and devastations--the Hoovervilles, the desperate, dirty children, the dissolution of kin, the oppressive labor conditions--in the Joad family. Then he set them down on a westward-running road, local dialect and all, for the world to acknowledge. For this marvel of observation and perception, he won the Pulitzer in 1940.
The prize must have come, at least in part, because alongside the poverty and dispossession, Steinbeck chronicled the Joads' refusal, even inability, to let go of their faltering but unmistakable hold on human dignity. Witnessing their degeneration from Oklahoma farmers to a diminished band of migrant workers is nothing short of crushing. The Joads lose family members to death and cowardice as they go, and are challenged by everything from weather to the authorities to the California locals themselves. As Tom Joad puts it: "They're a-workin' away at our spirits. They're a tryin' to make us cringe an' crawl like a whipped bitch. They tryin' to break us. Why, Jesus Christ, Ma, they comes a time when the on'y way a fella can keep his decency is by takin' a sock at a cop. They're workin' on our decency."
The point, though, is that decency remains intact, if somewhat battle-scarred, and this, as much as the depression and the plight of the "Okies," is a part of American history. When the California of their dreams proves to be less than edenic, Ma tells Tom: "You got to have patience. Why, Tom--us people will go on livin' when all them people is gone. Why, Tom, we're the people that live. They ain't gonna wipe us out. Why, we're the people--we go on." It's almost as if she's talking about the very novel she inhabits, for Steinbeck's characters, more than most literary creations, do go on. They continue, now as much as ever, to illuminate and humanize an era for generations of readers who, thankfully, have no experiential point of reference for understanding the depression. The book's final, haunting image of Rose of Sharon--Rosasharn, as they call her--the eldest Joad daughter, forcing the milk intended for her stillborn baby onto a starving stranger, is a lesson on the grandest scale. "'You got to,'" she says, simply. And so do we all. --Melanie Rehak [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Hours'
The Hours is both an homage to Virginia Woolf and very much its own creature. Even as Michael Cunningham brings his literary idol back to life, he intertwines her story with those of two more contemporary women. One gray suburban London morning in 1923, Woolf awakens from a dream that will soon lead to Mrs. Dalloway. In the present, on a beautiful June day in Greenwich Village, 52-year-old Clarissa Vaughan is planning a party for her oldest love, a poet dying of AIDS. And in Los Angeles in 1949, Laura Brown, pregnant and unsettled, does her best to prepare for her husband's birthday, but can't seem to stop reading Woolf. These women's lives are linked both by the 1925 novel and by the few precious moments of possibility each keeps returning to. Clarissa is to eventually realize:
There's just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we've ever imagined.... Still, we cherish the city, the morning; we hope, more than anything, for more.As Cunningham moves between the three women, his transitions are seamless. One early chapter ends with Woolf picking up her pen and composing her first sentence, "Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself." The next begins with Laura rejoicing over that line and the fictional universe she is about to enter. Clarissa's day, on the other hand, is a mirror of Mrs. Dalloway's--with, however, an appropriate degree of modern beveling as Cunningham updates and elaborates his source of inspiration. Clarissa knows that her desire to give her friend the perfect party may seem trivial to many. Yet it seems better to her than shutting down in the face of disaster and despair. Like its literary inspiration, The Hours is a hymn to consciousness and the beauties and losses it perceives. It is also a reminder that, as Cunningham again and again makes us realize, art belongs to far more than just "the world of objects." --Kerry Fried [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'I Don't Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'It's Kind of a Funny Story'
Like many smart, ambitious New York City teenagers, Craig Gilner seeks entry into Manhattans most prestigious school, Executive Pre-Professional High School. With single-minded determination, he works night and day to ace the entrance exam and gets in. Thats when everything starts to unravel. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'J.D. Salinger'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'J. D. Salinger's the Catcher in the Rye'
Includes a brief biography of the author, thematic and structural analysis of the work, critical views, and an index of themes and ideas. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'J.D. Salinger's the Catcher in the Rye'
Plot synopsis of this classic is made meaningful with analysis and quotes by noted literary critics, summaries of the work's main themes and characters, a sketch of the author's life and times, a bibliography, suggested test questions, and ideas for essays and term papers. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'John Steinbeck'
5 stories in one the grapes of wrath the moon is down cannery row east of eden of mice and men [via]

› Find signed collectible books: 'John Steinbeck's the Grapes of Wrath'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath'
Harold Bloom writes, "The Grapes of Wrath is a flawed but permanent American book." John Steinbeck's novel, still popular a half-century after its original publication, is the focus of this edition of Bloom's Notes. Along with a collection of some of the best criticism available on his work, this text includes a brief biography of the author, structural and thematic analysis, an index of themes and ideas, and more. This series is edited by Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities, Yale University; Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Professor of English, New York University Graduate School. These texts are the ideal aid for all students of literature, presenting concise, easy-to-understand biographical, critical, and bibliographical information on a specific literary work. Also provided are multiple sources for book reports and term papers with a wealth of information on literary works, authors, and major characters. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Malignant Sadness: The Anatomy of Depression'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression'
Sometimes, the legacy of depression includes a wisdom beyond one's years, a depth of passion unexperienced by those who haven't traveled to hell and back. Off the charts in its enlightening, comprehensive analysis of this pervasive yet misunderstood condition, The Noonday Demon forges a long, brambly path through the subject of depression--exposing all the discordant views and "answers" offered by science, philosophy, law, psychology, literature, art, and history. The result is a sprawling and thoroughly engrossing study, brilliantly synthesized by author Andrew Solomon.
Deceptively simple chapter titles (including "Breakdowns," "Treatments," "Addiction," "Suicide") each sit modestly atop a virtual avalanche of Solomon's intellect. This is not a book to be skimmed. But Solomon commands the language--and his topic--with such grace and empathy that the constant flow of references, poems, and quotations in his paragraphs arrive like welcome dinner guests. A longtime sufferer of severe depression himself, Solomon willingly shares his life story with readers. He discusses updated information on various drugs and treatment approaches while detailing his own trials with them. He describes a pharmaceutical company's surreal stage production (involving Pink Floyd, kick dancers, and an opener à la Cats) promoting a new antidepressant to their sales team. He chronicles his research visits to assorted mental institutions, which left him feeling he would "much rather engage with every manner of private despair than spend a protracted time" there. Under Solomon's care, however, such tales offer much more than shock value. They show that depression knows no social boundaries, manifests itself quite differently in each person, and has become political. And, while it may worsen or improve, depression will never be eradicated. Hope lies in finding ways--as Solomon clearly has--to harness its powerful lessons. --Liane Thomas [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Prozac Nation'
Elizabeth Wertzel writes with her finger in the faint pulse of a generation whose ruling icons are Kurt Cobain, Xanax, and pierced tongues. A memoir of her bouts with depression and skirmishes with drugs, Prozac Nation still manages to be a witty and sharp account of the psychopharmacology of an era. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Shopgirl'
Steve Martin's first foray into fiction is as assured as it is surprising. Set in Los Angeles, its fascination with the surreal body fascism of the upper classes feels like the comedian's familiar territory, but the shopgirl of the book's title may surprise his fans. Mirabelle works in the glove department of Neiman's, "selling things that nobody buys any more." Spending her days waiting for customers to appear, Mirabelle "looks like a puppy standing on its hind legs, and the two brown dots of her eyes, set in the china plate of her face, make her seem very cute and noticeable." Lonely and vulnerable, she passes her evenings taking prescription drugs and drawing "dead things," while pursuing an on-off relationship with the hopeless Jeremy, who possesses "a slouch so extreme that he appears to have left his skeleton at home." Then Mr. Ray Porter steps into Mirabelle's life. He is much older, rich, successful, divorced, and selfish, desiring her "without obligation." Complicating the picture is Mirabelle's voracious rival, her fellow Neiman's employee Lisa, who uses sex "for attracting and discarding men."
The mutual incomprehension, psychological damage, and sheer vacuity practiced by all four of Martin's characters sees Shopgirl veer rather uncomfortably between a comedy of manners and a much darker work. There are some startling passages of description and interior monologue, but the characters are often rather hazy types. Martin tries too hard in his attempt to write a psychologically intense novel about West Coast anomie, but Shopgirl is still an enjoyable, if rather light, read. --Jerry Brotton [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cure'
Believing that Christian joy was one of the most potent factors in the spread of Christianity in the early centuries, Lloyd-Jones not only lays bare the causes that have robbed many Christians of spiritual vitality, but also points the way to the cure. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'An Unquiet Mind'
From Kay Redfield Jamison - an international authority on manic-depressive illness, and one of the few women who are full professors of medicine at American Universities - a remarkable personal testimony: the revelation of her own struggle since adolescence with manic depression, and how it shaped her life. With vivid prose and wit, she takes us into the fascinating and dangerous territory of this form of madness - a world in which one pole can be the alluring dark land ruled by what Byron called the "melancholy star of the imagination," and the other a desert of depression and, all too frequently, death. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'El Guardian Entre el Centeno'
Por expreso deseo del autor, no esta ermitido que la editorial aporte en su material promocional ningu tipo de texto adicional, informacio biograica, cita o resen relacionados con esta obra. El lector interesado podra no obstante, encontrar abundante informacio al respecto en internet. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'El Guardian Entre El Centeno/ The Catcher in the Rye'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Las Uvas De LA Ira'
Las uvas de la ira es un hito en la literatura norteamericana que explora el conflicto entre ricos y pobres, analiza la reacción feroz de un hombre contra la injusticia y el estoicismo de una mujer igualmente heróica, y refleja los horrores de la Gran Depresión. Aunque sigue la migración de miles personas del Dust Bowl, Las uvas de la ira se enfoca en la historia de una familia de Oklahoma, los Joads, echados de su hogar y forzados a viajar rumbo a esa Tierra Prometida que era por ese entoncesy que de algun modo sigue siendoCalifornia. De sus desventurasen un país dividido surge un drama sobre la dignidad humana, a un tiempo trágico y majestuoso en su grandeza su valentía moral.
Publicada por primera vez en 1939, la novela reflejó su época como Uncle Tom's Cabin reflejó los años antes de la Guerra Civil norteamericana. John Steinbeck, un escritor que simpatizaba con la crítica fascista y comunista, insistió en que la versión integral del "Himno de batalla de la República" fuese impresa en la primera edición del libro, que adopta en su título unas palabras del primer verso: "Está pisoteando la vendimia donde se conservan las uvas de la ira." La crónica de Steinbeck sobre el avergonzante maltrato de las clases sociales de los años treinta es tal vez el más "americano" de todos los clásicos norteamericanos.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Las Uvas De La Ira/ the Grapes of Wrath'
Las uvas de la ira es un hito en la literatura norteamericana que explora el conflicto entre ricos y pobres, analiza la reacción feroz de un hombre contra la injusticia y el estoicismo de una mujer igualmente heróica, y refleja los horrores de la Gran Depresión. Aunque sigue la migración de miles personas del Dust Bowl, Las uvas de la ira se enfoca en la historia de una familia de Oklahoma, los Joads, echados de su hogar y forzados a viajar rumbo a esa Tierra Prometida que era por ese entoncesy que de algun modo sigue siendoCalifornia. De sus desventurasen un país dividido surge un drama sobre la dignidad humana, a un tiempo trágico y majestuoso en su grandeza su valentía moral.
Publicada por primera vez en 1939, la novela reflejó su época como Uncle Tom's Cabin reflejó los años antes de la Guerra Civil norteamericana. John Steinbeck, un escritor que simpatizaba con la crítica fascista y comunista, insistió en que la versión integral del "Himno de batalla de la República" fuese impresa en la primera edición del libro, que adopta en su título unas palabras del primer verso: "Está pisoteando la vendimia donde se conservan las uvas de la ira." La crónica de Steinbeck sobre el avergonzante maltrato de las clases sociales de los años treinta es tal vez el más "americano" de todos los clásicos norteamericanos.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Il Giovane Holden'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Le Ore'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Die Studen'
Die Stunden ist eine Hommage an Virginia Woolf und zugleich ein sehr eigenständiges Werk. Während Michael Cunningham sein literarisches Idol zu neuem Leben erweckt, verflechtet er ihre Geschichte mit denen von zwei weiteren, eher zeitgenössischen Frauen. Eines grauen Morgens im Jahre 1923, in einem Vorort von London, erwacht Woolf von einem Traum, der bald zu ihrem Roman Mrs. Dalloway führen sollte. In der Gegenwart, an einem schönen Junitag in Greenwich Village in New York, bereitet die 52-jährige Clarissa Vaughan eine Party für ihre alte Liebe vor, einen Dichter, der an Aids stirbt. Und in Los Angeles im Jahre 1949 bemüht sich die schwangere und ruhelose Laura Brown so gut sie kann, sich für den Geburtstag ihres Mannes zurecht zu machen, kann aber irgendwie nicht aufhören, Woolf zu lesen. Das Leben dieser drei Frauen verbindet sowohl der Roman aus dem Jahre 1925 als auch die wenigen kostbaren Momente der Möglichkeit, zu denen sie alle immer wieder zurückkehren. Clarissa wird irgendwann zu folgender Feststellung kommen: "Als Trost gibt es nur dies: hier und da eine Stunde, wenn unser Leben -- entgegen aller Erwartungen -- sich zu öffnen scheint und uns alles schenkt, was wir uns jemals gewünscht haben... Trotzdem, wir lieben die Stadt, den Morgen; wir hoffen, mehr als alles andere, mehr zu bekommen."
Wenn Cunningham zwischen den drei Frauen hin- und herwechselt, sind die Übergänge völlig nahtlos. Ein Kapitel am Anfang des Buches endet damit, dass Woolf ihren Stift nimmt und ihren ersten Satz schreibt: "Mrs. Dalloway sagte, sie würde die Blumen selbst kaufen." Das nächste Kapitel beginnt damit, dass sich Laura an diesem Satz und an der literarischen Welt erfreut, in die sie gerade im Begriff ist, sich zu begeben. Clarissas Tag ist, auf der anderen Seite, ein Spiegelbild von Mrs. Dalloways -- allerdings mit einem entsprechenden Maß an moderner Angleichung, da Cunningham seine Quelle der Inspiration aktualisiert und ausfeilt. Clarissa weiß, daß ihr Wunsch, ihrem Freund eine perfekte Party zu bieten, für viele trivial erscheinen mag. Sie findet das jedoch besser, als sich dem Unglück und der Verzweiflung zu verschließen. Wie seine literarische Inspiration ist Die Stunden eine Hymne an das Bewusstsein und an die Schönheit und die Verluste, die man damit wahrnimmt. Es erinnert uns auch daran -- wie uns Cunningham immer wieder bewusst macht -- dass Kunst bei weitem nicht nur "der Welt der Gegenstände" angehört. --Kerry Fried [via]
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